How Data Analytics Changed Companies Marketing Strategies

Interacting with brands is no longer confined to just walking into a shop as well as physically viewing a product. The overall customer journey has transformed and with it so has a brand’s marketing strategy. Email communications, website visits in addition to media engagements have made it easier for consumers to make informed decisions. However, keeping a track of these engagements is the biggest challenge for marketers today and their marketing strategies.

There is ample customer data but it is only through analysing this data and converting it into insights that it becomes quite useful to companies. This is where data analytics come in – it simply eases these complex processes and creates a continuous experience for the customer throughout their journey.

Alternatively, from a marketer’s viewpoint, analytics can help them to understand the effectiveness of their marketing strategies, weigh the pros and cons of their marketing activities and ultimately pinpoint the efforts required to achieve their business goals. Analysing and interpreting data subsequently provides a deeper understanding of the type of content or messages that would be more impactful.

Leveraging Big Data To Increase Sales And Revenues

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) across South Africa are gradually incorporating big data into their decision-making process. For example, a recently conducted study has revealed that:

• 42% of CMOs make marketing decisions based on customer-acquisition numbers,
• 5% based on customer insight,
• 1% prioritise digital marketing when making such decisions,
• 35% place greater emphasis on customer retention, and
• 5% make marketing decisions on the basis of branding.

It is worth noting that 46% of the polled marketers said that they would utilise various analytics strategies in order to gain consumer insight in 2017. Examples of such strategies include location-based targeting, personalization, and an increase in mobile and real-time reporting.

Big Data Equals Big Payoff

Also, big data allows marketers to gauge how much money they are spending in addition to how it can improve. This allows businesses to allocate their marketing rands more efficiently.

Between 2006 and 2014, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company surveyed more than 400 diverse client engagements across a variety of industries and regions. The company found that an integrated analytics approach can free up fifteen to twenty percent of a company’s marketing spending and estimated as much as R2.8 trillion worldwide could be reinvested to other areas.

Lucrative marketers understand that a positive customer experience usually leads to more sales and referrals. In today’s data-driven world, customers are now more informed that brands can collect their information through loyalty cards, social media activity as well as company apps, to name a few. They understand that when a brand recognises who their customers are, and what motivates them, they do a better job meeting customer needs.

A marketer who wants to be effective in today’s competitive market needs to be able to look at the data, understand it, analyse it and then interpret it in order to create a smart marketing strategy.

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